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Reviews For: Hustler CGT-144 Collinear Trunk Lip Mount Antenna

Category: Antennas: VHF/UHF+ Omnidirectional: verticals, mobile, etc

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Review Summary For : Hustler CGT-144 Collinear Trunk Lip Mount Antenna
Reviews: 29MSRP: 51.95
Description:
Price listed is the current HRO price (3-12-03
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.new-tronics.com/main/index.html
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00294.4
KK5DR Rating: 2015-03-08
Not tree branch resistant Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I was pleased with the antenna performance. It really could reach out and grab the repeater at great distantces that no other antenna could.
With that said, I destroyed mine with a few too many impacts on tree branches. This is mainly due to the large size of the antenna, and the colinear section being abit delicate.
WB9VKM Rating: 2015-03-08
Great Dual band antenna Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I had one on these back in the late 70's- lost the load coil so I had to buy another one.Still using a 35 year old Avanti trunk lip mount. Works great on 2 meters,can hear and work stations I could not on a 5/8 base load.Now here is the odd part- it loads and tunes perfectly on 10 meters- 50 ohms at 1.1 swr. A HTX 10 at 25 watts and this antenna and if I hear them I work them including some DX pile ups. 10 countries in just the last month.There are a lot of people that could not believe the signal from this set up.
N0FPE Rating: 2013-10-24
good for me Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have had a CG-144 for years. I have never used the trunk mount version. But the ball mount version has always served me well. In a side by side comparison test with a diamond SG-7900nmo the CG-144 always heard the distant station when the diamond heard nothing. I also was heard by the distant station when the sg-7900 was not heard at all. I also ran the cg-144 with the base kit and it was as good or better than the current crop of 17ft fiberglass antennas. For me it has been a great performer.

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Earlier 5-star review posted by N0FPE on 2010-05-02

Probably the best monoband mobile antenna out there. I can hear things when others sitting right beside me cant. as far as a trunk lip mount..I would have to pass, just to much antenna for that kind of mount in my opinion. I use a nice heavy ball mount.
KG8Q Rating: 2013-10-24
Not a game changer Time Owned: more than 12 months.
From early on in my ham life my elmer would tell me "kid, it's hard to beat a quarter wave". With respect to mobile antennas I know that's true. Another would tell me "there's no magic there" regarding mobile whips. Well I didn't listen, well no it just took me a while to listen. Before setting out on a cross country trip I wanted to be sure that I was getting the best bang for my buck with the 1/4 wave. I did a horse race with 3 antennas: the Diamond SG2000 / Hustler cg-144 / and the venerable straight 1/4 wave I assembled from a stainless whip and a nmo base. With a fixed station about 17 miles away I tried each with 10 watts. The only difference was the Hustler was side mounted on the vehicle with a ball mount. The SG2000 and 1/4 wave were on the top of the vehicle, center of the roof, fed with a drilled in NMO mount.The vehicle was a modest Ford Escape but with substantial roof area. The reasoning here was that is was hard to in-vision someone top mounting a cg-144 seeing that it is 7' tall. The signal reports were:

1/4 wave - S3 and 1/2
sg2000 - S4
cg-144 - S2 to S2 and 1/2

The vehicle was turned in an arc to accommodate the CG-144 to try and take advantage of any directivity that it may have had. S2 and 1/2 was what we were able to achieve. The receiving station had an analog s-meter. For all practical purposes, half of s-unit or about a dB is most certainly not worth $90 especially when you can assemble a 1/4 wave for under $20 perhaps less if you have "stuff" laying around. Another thing to keep in mind is that the performance of the Diamond will surely decline if you mount it off to one side or another not fully taking advantage of the image plane. There is certainly no magic when it comes to mobile whips. Another moral of the story is bigger is not necessarily better.
KM0PT Rating: 2013-05-07
Great design, but materials have gone down hill. Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I bought this to replace a Lakeview #9007 2 meter colinear that I have but I was very disappointed of operation while mobile. When traveling more than 30 MPH the antenna would lean back so far that I couldn't hit a repeater that was less than 10 miles line of sight. I compared it to a 20+ year old unit that is used mobile and it is simply flimsy. The older CG-144s had considerably stiffer stainless masts and whips. I may have my local machine shop cut a new mast and whip out of some stiffer stainless rod.

It simply did not work for the mobile application it was purchased for.
W4JPS Rating: 2012-02-02
Good Collinear for 2m Time Owned: more than 12 months.
This is a good gain mobile collinear for 2m, no doubt! You absolutely cannot beat it for the price.

The trunk-lip mount is not as great IMHO, but would work where salinity isn't an issue, and I would still probably use it again.

I ran this antenna on an '88 Olds Delta 88 and it worked very well for years in Myrtle Beach, SC.

The trunk-lip mount began to rust underneath that nice grey plastic mount cap and eventually the ground / bond between the set screws and the trunk deteriorated unbeknown to me.

This isn't really a design flaw more than it is a user maintenance issue. I never regularly checked the VSWR and paid for it.

The system still performed well, so I thought until I sold the car. There was obviously an impedance mismatch and the final PA in my FT-2500 now transmits in the 20-30W range because of it.
K1DA Rating: 2011-08-06
good antenna but BIG Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have several of these from back when rf power on 2 was expensive. They worked very well. Recently I wanted to inprove my aircraft band scanning setup so I retuned one for the aircraft band. The lower section has enough extra length but the top whip doesn't have enough length to be a 5/8 on 130 MHZ so I made one from SS whip stock. On the Hustler "base station" mount I now hear a control tower and ADIS which were in the noise with a 1/4 wave cut to 130 on the same mount. I'm probably right on the edge of the design limit but it works.
Only downside for mobile use is that with a very sharp pattern, if it bends too far over at high speed the pattern tilt is into the road in back and up in the air in front. You might have to tie some thin monofilament from the antenna to the car to keep it upright.
AE5J Rating: 2011-08-05
Unbelievable! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
This is more of a durability/longevity report. I bought 2 of the CG-144's for use on different vehicles when they were first introduced many years ago. Because they were so tall, I had to take them out of service. Unbeknownst to me, my XYL found them in a storage shed, thought I might use them some day, and put them outside leaning on a fence. I didn't see them and they eventually got buried under about 6 inches of dirt/grass next to a leaky water faucet.

Yesterday I found both of them (with a shovel)and figured they were gone. I decided to take them in and clean them up. Shined up pretty well - except for the coil housing. I thought I would try one for grins and see if it still worked. Amazingly, the SWR was like when it was new and I could easily hit a repeater 40+ miles away with the antenna at 6 ft.

Here is the unbleievable part. These antennas had been buried for more than 7 years! While I don't recommend you try it at home yourself, it does speak volumes for build quality.

73 - Pete
W5JH Rating: 2011-04-17
Well Built - Great Gain Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Like most of the reviewers have stated, this is a great antenna. It is big but you can't get the gain without being big. The thing I noticed is that this antenna requires a very good ground. I could not get the SWR down to an acceptable level until I improved the ground. I added 3 #12 copper wire radials to my gum drop mount and the SWR was great. My antenna is mounted on the rail of my pickup truck and even though I had cleaned all the paint from around the 5/8 inch hole, the ground was still not good enough. I added a single radial and the SWR improved a lot (1.3:1). Three radials really improved the SWR. It now works better than any 2 meter mobile antenna I have ever tried.
KE5D Rating: 2010-12-20
Works Good Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I have seen these antennas for years. I mounted one on the trunk of my 97 Sentra. I have gained another 40 miles (was 80)of coverage over the 5/8 antenna. I looke to see why such an increase would happen. The 1/4 collinear part does not give it that much more gain. I modeled the antenna using EZNEC and found that it focuses the radiation at the horizon much better than 1/4 wave or 5/8 wave. Nick